A New Low Enrichment Uranium Core Design of MNSR

The Miniature Neutron Source Reactor (MNSR) is a low-power research reactor, which uses 90% high enriched uranium (HEU) fuel. However, due to the nuclear safety risk, and according to the principle of nuclear non-proliferation, MNSR must be gradually converted from HEU to low enriched uranium (LEU), which means the LEU fuel with U-235 enrichment less than 20% should be used. The prototype MNSR of China Institute of Atomic Energy has completed the transformation, but other commercial MNSRs have not finished, which is different with the prototype in the application and structure. Therefore, using MCNP code to simulate, calculate and optimization design LEU core has been done in this issue. Firstly, UO2 with U-235 enrichment of 12.5% was selected as the fuel pellet of LEU core, keeping the rest of the core unchanged. The Φ, excess reactivity and the worth of the central control rod are calculated and analyzed. The results show that the commercial MNSR of LEU conversion is feasible. Secondly, in this paper, through changing the fuel elements and the arrangement method, the new low enriched uranium (NLEU) core was designed to improve Φ/P ratio of the core, the proportion of thermal neutrons and the worth of the control rod. UO2 with U-235 enrichment of 19.75% was selected as the fuel pellet of the NLEU, NLEU not only meets the design parameters, but in many parameters, NLEU is better than LEU. The fuel element quantity is reduced by 43%, from original 344 to 196; reducing the amount of U-235 loading; improving the Φ/P ratio and the thermal neutron fraction is increased. The results show that the NLEU optimizes some parameters, simplifies the core structure, saves the construction cost, improves the nuclear safety and is more suitable for the application of MNSR.